During the course, one night they sat us all down around a bonfire and had a serious ‘talk’ with us. As part of the training, they were teaching us what would be required of us if we decided we’d like to become missionaries. They handed out popsicle sticks and pencils, and told us to write on the stick our dearest, most precious dream. We all did as instructed, because so far everything had been enjoyable and enlightening as we learned pigin-English, went hiking in the jungle, and went to nifty native markets.
I somehow didn’t see it coming. Maybe it was because the missionary who was leading the bonfire-time was smiling and acting friendly the whole while. I thought we’d trade sticks and tell something about ourselves.
Instead, the missionary told us that becoming a really committed Christian willing to follow God to the ends of the earth meant giving up every dream, every desire, and every hope we’d ever had. He then told us to throw the stick — our greatest dream — into the fire, and when we did, we were supposed to really honestly give it up within ourselves.
I watched in disbelief as the group of twenty kids, all suddenly sad, some bursting into tears, all did as commanded. I got up and stormed back to my cabin, furious, and I still have that popsicle stick to this day.
There was a practice in ancient Israel that God found absolutely disgusting. It was based on the story of the sacrifice of Isaac: how Abraham took his only and most beloved son, the son of his old age, and laid him on a pile of firewood and almost sacrificed him like a sheep, because God had asked him to. In the story, God stopped Abraham from doing such a horrible thing, because God had only wanted to know — in Abraham’s specific case — whether he really believed God could bring about a whole nation through Isaac, and whether God kept his promises. Abraham was fully convinced that God would raise Isaac from the dead, and didn’t even hesitate.
But in later years, this test got mingled with demonic practices and turned by the religious leaders into a horrible abomination. In order to prove their loyalty to God, they taught the people of Israel to actually kill their children on alters to God, and burn them. Perhaps they believed that by giving up their greatest, most precious and beloved thing in the world, God would have to hear their prayer and do whatever they asked. Maybe they were just trying to prove how loyal they were to God.
Either way, God became furious with this evil practice and thunderously condemned it in no uncertain terms.
“And they built the high places of the Ba‘al, which are in the valley of Ben-hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech; which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.” (Jer. 32:35)
“Again, you shall say to the Sons of Israel: Whoever he be of the Sons of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of his seed to Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people; because he has given of his seed to Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he gives of his seed to Molech, and do not kill him, then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go astray after him, whoring to Molech from among the people.” (Lev. 20:2-5)
Child-sacrifice was evidentially rampant in Israel. There are caves under large boulders all over the land, boulders either in the ‘clefts of the rocks’ (valleys) or on top of hills, including the rock that the dome of the rock is built around, where the Canaanites would carry out disgusting practices. According to legend and such persons as Michael Rood (who may or may not be entirely accurate), they would impregnate virgins in these caves, then kill the resultant child there. Impressed by the brutality of these rites, the later Hebrews who occupied the land after them took up the same practices.
We can see however that the golden calf, and the worship of the bull-god and all of his rites, traveled with the Hebrews all the way from Egypt. Back then, he seemed to be the most popular god on the planet.
The 12th century rabbi, Rashi, commenting on Jeremiah 7:31 made the following claim:
“Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”
There are a variety of other accounts of the same freakish practices carried out in Greek and Roman times to Molech’s later incarnations of Saturn and Kronos, but I won’t horrify the reader by quoting any more of them. They are all pretty much the same.
Molech was probably one of the various forms of the minotaur, Ba’al, some kind of fire or sun god. Both the word Molech (Melech) and Ba’al mean “king” or “master”, and the bull is the ancient symbol for the ‘leader’ or ‘strong one’. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “A” or aleph, meaning first or the number “one”, is the head of a bull. Molech seemed to be some kind of father-figure to the ancient Ammonites, and possibly the non-lethal fire-baptism or “passing through the flames” was a form of giving the child over to the deity, so that he would become their parent and protect them.
Early Greek mythology hints at a practice of rendering an infant immortal by passing them through a fire, and it seems the practice of giving children were given a kind of non-lethal baptism of fire by passing them through a fire to sanctify them for Molech was widespread throughout the ancient world. But although most children escaped death at the hands of the golden calf, a select few did not.
What is a dream?
In the ancient days, a child was considered in many places less than entirely human until it came of age; they were more of a possession, like a wife. God never intended people to think of wives and their children this way, but it is a natural result of the arrogance of sin. The man ‘owned’ the wife and children; like slaves, he could do what he wanted with them. This was especially true in the case of the children: he’d made them, so they were his, the work of his hands, his own craftsmanship. And he could make more to replace them.
In the same way, people these days believe that dreams are of our own invention. Somehow we have learned from the secular world that dreams are something we make up as children or young adults, and have no more and no less value than a daydream. Usually a dream is to do, or become, something wonderful. A dream to be a doctor, to be a musician, to be an artist, or to invent something, to create.
This desire to create was not generated in the heart of Man. We are in the image of God, but we are not the Creator. All thoughts come from one of two places: either God, or from the evil spiritual creatures that are now infesting our planet. If the thought is good, and brings life and hope and joy and peace, it is from God.
Dreams are given to us from God. In fact, they are our inheritance, our own individual little piece of Creation. When we are born again, we receive a piece of the Spirit of God, to make us alive and to dwell in us forever. This is like the portions of land that were given to the Hebrews when they went into the promised land: each man was ordered never to give up his inheritance, never to sell his land, and in the year of Jubilee any land that had been loaned to other families had to be returned to the original. This was also why a widow with no children had to marry the brother of her husband; so she could have a son and name him after the dead husband, so that the man’s land — his inheritance — never got given to anyone else.
That little chunk of the promised land came complete with houses, vines, fruit trees, springs of water, everything they needed to live a full and abundant life. In the same way, the dream we are given from God contains everything we need to make us gloriously fulfilled on this earth. It is what God expects of us; to take the dreams He gave us and make them come to pass. They take hard work, they take dedication, and we will suffer persecution: people will mock us and laugh at us. But it is what we are called and chosen to do.
Dreams are like children. As little ones they need constant attention; they play and they are small and silly, and they can’t support themselves. But as they grow up and get bigger they get more serious, more capable, until as adults they should be able to support themselves — and us.
Throwing that popsicle stick into that bonfire would have been just like taking one of my children and tossing it into the flames. It would be just like one of the Hebrews burning and destroying his inherited land and moving away forever, giving it up.
Why would a parent be so desperate as to sacrifice his son or daughter to an idol? Obviously he believed the return would be worth the cost. Maybe he believed he would prove his loyalty to God, and God would give him greater rewards for it. Maybe he did it to buy favors from God, or a better place in Heaven. Maybe a crown.
Why would Christians sacrifice their dreams in a bonfire to a god who doesn’t allow those dreams to live, and grow up, and become what God intended them to be?
This practice of sacrificing one’s heart’s desires, ones dreams and hopes and fondest wishes “for God” is so widespread in the Church that I doubt it will ever be removed from it. But I can assure you: God never asked them to do it. It never even entered His mind. It is not what He intends, desires, or condones.
In truth it is an abominable practice. God gave us things to sacrifice to Him; we are to give Him the first of our flocks and fruits — today that translates as any money-making endeavor. We are to bring His priests bread, and fruit, and the best food. We are to provide the House of God with everything it requires to function. But all of this is supposed to be given out of the surplus that God gives us: the blessing, the overflowing money and prosperity that comes from the fulfillment of the dreams we were born with.
If we sacrifice the dreams themselves, we won’t have anything else to give to God, because we have just cut off His source of giving. We have not only condemned ourselves to a life of lack and want, but also a life of living outside God’s will for our lives. If our dream was to be a baseball player, and we become a banker instead, we are not doing what God told us to do.
Do not sacrifice your children to Molech. Do not kill your dreams in some ill-fated quest to impress God somehow. God is only impressed by obedience, not by sacrifice.
“For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)
What you give up for God is not nearly as important as what you keep for God. In fact, the keeping is much harder. Anyone can kill their dreams; but how many can follow them? And anyway, if you think that God requires for you to kill your dreams in order to follow Him to the ends of the earth, you don’t know God at all and you are probably living entirely outside His plan. Don’t blame Him if your life sucks.
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